Blue People

It seems everywhere you go these days, you encounter "blue" people, or rather, tattooed people. I mean, it's not that they sport one or perhaps a couple, but they are
covered. I'll admit, though I am not interested in getting any ink, some of the art is
quite beautiful, intricate, interesting. But, someday, we are going to have a whole population of crepe-y skinned, wrinkled old folks with sleeves, tattooed arms, or calves, or at least of those tattoos we can see.

Tattooing is age old, especially among native peoples as forms of ritual, rites of passage, religious belief, but there was a resurgence in the 18th Century with the voyages to Polynesia by Captain Cook. Joseph Banks, a botanist, who sailed with Cook, introduced the word "tattoo" from a tahitian word "tatau" meaning "to strike", alluding to the sound that was made when ink was applied to the skin. I guess the ink was pounded, or struck, in since there were no machines.

Sailors, of course, are always looking for new adventure, and what better iconoclastic thing to do but get a tattoo as a remembrance of exotic places, or to nostalgically recall people and places back home. Sailors learned the art, but also, there was almost always a tattoo parlor in every British port. I recall the very simple tattoo of the old sailor in Master and Commander - "hold fast" - one letter on each finger, but some were quite elaborate.

Of course, back home, tattooing was mostly reserved for the odd person, prostitute, criminal, the sideshow freak, those on the edge of regular, accepted society. And as usual, the more the better, as a kind of defiance. It later became kind of fashionable for the elite class to sport a tattoo by the end of the nineteenth century, but earlier, it just was not done. Not for decent people.

In Japan during the Edo period (the 1700's), tattooing was practiced, but the Asian culture has always been a bit more free where self expression and the physical body is concerned, even if it is veiled in their particular, erotic mystery.